Regional monitoring systems, such as fire detection/monitoring systems are very commonly required in multi-story buildings used for residential, business or commercial purposes. Such systems can provide information as to developing alarm conditions, such as developing fire conditions, on a given floor or region of a multi-story building. This information can be coupled to a fire alarm control panel or control unit which might be located in the lobby area so as to be readily accessible by first responders.
In addition to being able to detect and identify developing fire conditions it has been recognized that it is useful and helpful to provide individuals in the vicinity of such conditions with information as to evacuation routes, or the like so as to assist their departure from the vicinity of the alarm condition. It has also been found useful to provide flexible evacuation or escape routes through the use of adaptive evacuation systems which can respond dynamically to developing conditions.
Adaptive evacuation systems offer the potential to relieve the occupant of difficult emergency egress decisions. With knowledge of the location of fire and smoke hazards in the building, these systems could plan safe routes and communicate them to occupants. The basic adaptive evacuation system receives information from a fire panel about currently active smoke and heat detectors. Routes and exits in proximity to the active detectors are assumed to be unsafe and closed for use in evacuation. Evacuation planning is done with the remaining “safe” routes. Assessing the situation, predicting the progression of fire and smoke, and then identifying the paths unsafe for evacuation are important steps in adaptive evacuation systems.
A process or method would be useful to predict the fire and smoke propagation paths, which could then be sent as input to the evacuation route planning algorithm. Smoke propagation methodology is complicated by severe limitations in processing capability and speed of the typical fire control panels. This restricts the use of high fidelity smoke propagation models. An efficient approach to smoke spread prediction that requires small amounts of real time computation by available fire control panels would be beneficial.